


A Little Faith

by No_Illusions



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: But they come back, Character Death, I promise, Lots of character death, M/M, Nicky Whump, andy is afraid and hates it, andy is not handling mortality particularly well, andy whump, booker is drunk, nicky is so tired, nicky wishes he were in malta, nile absolutely refuses to be the only responsible person in the room, no one is handling andy's mortality particularly well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25855231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/No_Illusions/pseuds/No_Illusions
Summary: When Andy and Nicky once again fall into Dr. Kozak's hands, they both must grapple with Andy's new-found mortality.Note: Not epilogue compliant, meaning Quynh hasn't returned.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 33
Kudos: 379





	1. A Little Faith

**Author's Note:**

> TW: graphic depictions of violence, temporary character death.
> 
> Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me.
> 
> Notes: This takes place after the movie, but Quynh has not returned.

Andy awoke with a gasp, coughing. Her mind was hazy, and she was momentarily confused, until it snapped back into focus with horrifying clarity. They’d been in a safe house. The others had been watching TV, but she hadn’t been paying attention, lost in her own thoughts. And then a bang, and gas everywhere. Coughing. The sound of three gunshots. And shapes looming over her and she coughed, struggled to stand. Then a pain on her temple, and darkness.

Her eyes snapped open, and she jerked upwards, only to find herself restrained, flat on her back on a table of sorts, she thought. Adrenaline flooded her system, and she screamed her fury, yelling wordlessly as she thrashed against the bonds. Her head hurt.

Where was her family? The thought pushed itself through the haze of Andy’s anger and pain and, yes, fear. There was nothing Andy feared more than being taken, being helpless and powerless to protect those she loved. She hadn’t feared it, once. But then Quynh had been thrown into the sea in an iron coffin, and all of Andy’s naive illusions (how had she managed to keep them for so long? Thousands of years, and she had been a child until that moment) had been shattered. Immortality was not enough to guarantee that everything would be ok. Immortality was not enough to keep her family together if she was helpless.

And, Andy thought, with another wordless scream of fury, she did not even have her immortality anymore.

“Andy, Andy!!” The words sounded far away, held at bay by her thrashing and her panic and her yells. “Andromache!” She stilled at that.

“Andromache, listen to me, I am here, listen to me.” Nicky’s voice, his accent thick with concern.

“Nicky?” she gasped, trying to get her breathing back under control. She turned her head, looking for him. There. He was to her left, maybe six feet from her, also strapped down to an examining table, torso angled slightly upwards, as she was, she realized. He was shirtless, just as he had been in Merrick’s lab. “Nicky, where are we?” She hated the tremor in her voice, hated how she sounded weak and frightened. But Nicky would not begrudge her this panic. Nicky, who had held her after she had escaped the witch trials without Quynh. She had been feral then, unable to do more than scream wordlessly. But Joe and Nicky had been there, had seen her through it, without judgement. No, he would not begrudge her this, he would understand her fear.

“I am here, Andromache.” His voice was steady, calming. A voice she had known for nearly a thousand years. “Although I do not know where here is,” he added ruefully.

She looked around. A lab, she realized, with a near-hysterical laugh. Another fucking lab. Would they never be free of labs? It had only been a year. A year since Nile had busted them out of Merrick’s lab, full of jars of Nicky and Joe’s organs (oh, yes, she had seen them and recognized them for what they were. So had Booker. Nile had not.).

“Where are the others?” she asked, turning away from the white walls and empty sample jars, looking back at Nicky. His eyes were calming, in that way he had of projecting emotions. He was trying to calm her, she knew, and it was working. If she hadn’t been so scared, she would have resented how easily Nicky could manipulate her with only his eyes.

His forehead creased at her question, jaw going hard for just a fraction of a second. “I don’t know. They are not here, I hope. I haven’t seen them since before.”

Andy clenched her jaw, and nodded. They would hope that they hadn’t been taken, then.

“Are you ok?” she asked Nicky softly, eyeing him worriedly.

Nicky closed his eyes briefly. “I am fine, Andy. I just…” He cleared his throat. “I just hope that Joe is not here. Or Nile.”

Andy nodded. This would be hard on Nicky, without Joe. It would be harder on him with Joe here, of course. But the worst possibility, the one neither of them would voice, would be if Joe were here, but not with Nicky. They would hope that wasn’t the case.

Suddenly, a door in the corner banged open. Through it, Andy caught a glimpse of a long white hallway. She hadn’t seen any windows since waking up, and this hallway was no different. No indication of where they were.

A woman in a white lab coat walked in, followed by half a dozen guards. “You,” said Nicky. He did not sound surprised. Andy’s eyes narrowed as she placed the face. Dr. Kozak, from Merrick’s lab.

“What do you want?” Andy spat at her, anger holding her fear at bay. The woman didn’t even blink.

“You, Andromache the Scythian,” she said calmly and without preamble. “No longer immortal. Him,” she looked at Nicky. “Immortal, despite all the times he died on my table.” Andy kept her gaze on the woman, face stone cold, refusing to flinch or look at Nicky. They had never talked about what had been done to Joe and Nicky in that lab a year before. They had not needed to. The haunted eyes and persistent nightmares had said enough. “I want to know why,” continued the woman, approaching Andy.

“There is nothing to know,” Nicky spoke up. “There is not a reason besides fate, or destiny, and there certainly not a reason that can be found by your science.”

The woman shrugged as she reached Andy’s table. “I believe that there is.” She picked up a scalpel. “And I believe that I will find it.”

“Hey, wait!” exclaimed Nicky, sounding truly concerned now. Andy was still watching the woman, who was disinfecting her scalpel slowly and methodically. “She’s mortal! Leave her alone! You will kill her!”

The woman gave him a look that was half amusement and half scorn. “I will not kill her. I am only taking some samples. I will stitch her up again afterwards.”

Andy felt her breath catch at these words. She had experienced enough minor (and major) wounds in the last year to have thoroughly remembered how much it sucked to be injured and mortal. This was not going to be pleasant.

“There will be nothing to find!” exclaimed Nicky. “She is mortal now, just like you! There will be nothing to find!”

Andy rolled her head to look at him. “Nicky, it’s ok,” she lied. “Leave it, it’s ok.”

The woman was watching them intently, looking as fascinated as if her actual lab mice had started giving each other pep talks.

“Look,” Nicky said to the woman. “You told me once that you believed your work could change the world. Hurting her will not change the world. There is nothing to be gained from it. But maybe…” He trailed off, then squared his shoulders and hardened his eyes. “Maybe samples from me will get you what you want. Maybe there is something to be found in those. That is what I would… recommend.” He stumbled slightly over the last word.

Andy wanted to laugh and cry, but settled instead for shooting Nicky a look, half glare, half smile. It was the look she gave when they were being idiots, too protective of her newly-mortal self. It was sweet, in a way. It made her feel loved. It was also fucking ridiculous and a bit embarrassing and she wished they would all cut it out.

The woman raised her eyebrows at Nicky. “Don’t worry, I will take samples from you next. Although, I will not have to be as careful.”

Andy didn’t miss the minute flinch on Nicky’s face, there for only a fraction of a second.

Kozak looked down at her musingly. “I suppose I will have to give you something for the pain, just a local injection. We can’t have you moving too much and damaging something irreparable.”

Andy gritted her teeth. “Fuck you,” she spat out. The woman raised her eyebrows, then shrugged.

“It can wait a moment. I will start with surface samples.”

It turned out that ‘surface samples’ meant skin. Andy tried not to make a sound as the scalpel bit into her stomach, but she couldn’t stop herself from panting, desperately trying to breathe through the pain. Kozak had simply cut off her shirt, leaving her in only a bra. Andy was unconcerned about this. Nicky had seen her in less; there was no place for modesty in the lives of immortals.

Distantly, she could hear Nicky yelling. She was reasonably certain he was still speaking in English, not that it would have mattered. She knew all of his languages, and more. But, through the haze of pain, she could not understand the words. She thought maybe she heard her name, but couldn’t be sure. She had had so many names.

Then the pain became a fire on her stomach and there was a ripping sensation and Andy screamed. Her body bucked under the restraints, but it did no good. Kozak quickly jerked away the scalpel so Andy didn’t impale herself, but she hardly noticed. Her attention was caught by what Kozak laid on the table by her side. A strip of skin, maybe half an inch wide and three inches long. Andy’s skin.

Andy lay there, mouth open, gasping at the ceiling. Her eyes were watering from the pain, and a few tears fell down her cheeks. She tried to blink them away, tried to tell herself to suck it up. But a tiny voice in her head kept repeating _it’s not going to heal, it’s not going to get better. This is your life now._ Her stomach felt slick and wet with blood, and every heave of her chest pulled at the wound, making her flinch and twitch as she tried to direct her movement elsewhere.

She heard Nicky’s voice. “Andy, Andy, Andromache, you are ok, it is ok.” He had said it in half a dozen languages before Andy could catch her breath enough to respond.

“Nic--,” she choked out, before her breath caught again on a gasp. The scalpel was back, she realized. One strip of skin was apparently not enough for this mad woman.

Five strips later, and Andy had screamed herself hoarse. The last had been the worst. For some ungodly reason the woman had taken it from her bullet wound scar from the year before, and the skin hadn’t wanted to come, had needed to be cut at over and over again as the scar tissue clung to the muscle below. Andy thought she might have lost consciousness at the end of it, just for a moment. The world had gone dark, at least, and she was reasonably certain no one had turned out the lights. She felt lightheaded from the pain and the bloodloss. Everything hurt, and her stomach was excruciating.

Then there was another searing pain across her entire stomach, and beyond the pained screams (hers?) she heard Nicky yelling “Stop, stop! The shock will kill her! Stop, you must give her something!” The pain still continued, and the murmur of words as Nicky and Kozak argued faded beyond her understanding. Then there was a sharp prick in her stomach, and the fire began to recede.

And it kept receding until there was nothing there, and Andy jerked her head up in shock, her eyes opening wide (when had they closed?). She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t feel her stomach at all. Looking down at herself, she saw Kozak blotting blood away from her mauled skin, wiping periodically with a disinfecting wipe. Ah, that is what the fire had been. Nicky must have made Kozak give her a local anesthetic.

Andy let her head fall back, closing her eyes for a moment as she saw Kozak reach for a needle, already threaded and waiting. Lovely. Time to be sewn up.

“Andy?” Nicky’s voice, again. Part of her wished he would leave her alone, let her slip away into unconsciousness. She was exhausted. “Andy, please.”

She could not ignore that desperate note in Nicky’s voice. She opened her eyes, rolling her head to look at him. He looked awful, and she almost laughed at the thought. She must look so much worse; no wonder he was worried. The straps holding him down were coated in blood, as was the table below him, although any wounds had long since healed. He must have torn himself apart trying to get to her, trying to get free as she had been lost in the pain. That was sweet of him.

“I’m here,” she rasped at him, voice cracking after all of the screaming she had done.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, somewhat ridiculously.

“Not at the moment.” There was a strange tugging sensation from her torso as she spoke, and she decided not to look.

There was nothing to say after that. Nicky just stared at her wordlessly, eyes dull, and she looked back at him, until her eyelids started to flutter. The last thing she saw was Nicky jerking towards her, her name on his lips. Then everything was dark, and she was grateful.

__

When the door to his flat flew open and suddenly there was a gun in Booker’s face, he almost laughed. Yeah, this was pretty in line with the day he’d been having. Or the week. Or the year.

But then he saw who was holding the gun, and he froze, wondering if he’d really had enough alcohol today to start hallucinating.

“Joe?” he asked hesitantly.

Joe’s eyes were wild, and he was covered in dust and blood and sweat and gore.

“You!” he yelled. Booker just blinked at him. Joe grabbed him by the shoulder, still pointing the gun at his face. But now that they were touching, Booker could tell that Joe was trembling. “You did this! And now you will make it right!”

“Joe, what….” Then the butt of the gun was crashing across his face, and Booker stumbled backwards, hand on his broken nose.

Then, Nile’s voice. “Enough,” she said. Joe stopped, and Booker raised an eyebrow. He was amazed anyone had been able to stop Joe when he was in this kind of rage, let alone Nile rather than….

“Where’s Andy?” Booker asked, suddenly absolutely certain that he did not want to know the answer. “Where’s Nicky?”

Joe growled at him. Nile sighed. “We think Dr. Kozak has them. The doctor from Merrick’s lab. It was like last time. They came to a safe house, we don’t know how they found us. Copley’s looking into it now, and trying to track down Kozak. They gassed us, shot us, then took Andy and Nicky.”

Booker blinked. “Is Andy…. Did they shoot Andy?”

Nile’s jaw clenched. “We don’t know. They know Andy’s mortal now. Hopefully they want her alive.” Booker flinched at the bluntness of the statement. Nile had changed in the last year. She was harsher, more direct, more in control. But looking at her, he still saw hints of the kind, innocent girl he’d met right before everything went to shit. And he saw that she was scared.

“Why… why are you here?” Booker asked.

“You’re going to make it right,” Joe growled. He was still pointing his gun at Booker, but he had taken a step back.

“I don’t know where they are,” Booker said. What did they think he was going to do?

“We’ll know soon,” said Nile, her voice even and confident.It was only her eyes that gave her away. Hard, fierce, determined, and absolutely terrified and far, far too young for any of this. Still, she continued. “You’re going to come with us, going to help. We can use all the help we can get in this.”

Booker looked at her, at Joe, and back at Nile. Neither of them were asking, but he nodded anyways. “Okay.”

__

Andy woke to the sound of Nicky choking on his own blood.

“Hey!” she shouted, jerking upwards in her bonds. “What are you doing? Leave him alone!”

Kozak looked up from her intent examination of Nicky. “Ah, you’re awake,” she said. Beside her, Nicky’s hands scrabbled uselessly against the arms of the examining table. There was some sort of strap or brace across his forehead, securing his head in place -- forcing him to keep choking, Andy realized. Blood was bubbling out of his mouth, dripping down the sides of his face. His eyes were wide in panic as they stared at the ceiling, as his instincts screamed at him to breathe and his brain short-circuited in animalistic, mortal fear. Andy knew the feeling well, and it never got easier.

“Nicky,” she gasped out quickly. “Nicolo, listen to me, I’m here, it’s ok, you’re not alone, you’re ok.”

She kept speaking to him in the interminable seconds it took him to die. She had no idea if he could hear her -- probably not, she reasoned -- but there was nothing else she could do, and although she wanted to scream out her frustration before breaking free and killing these sadists, she recognized that she was unlikely to break free, let alone escape, and her screams would probably not make Nicky feel much better as he died. So she spoke to him, reassuring him, slipping between languages without even thinking about it, trying to let him know that he was not alone.

Andy watched the whole time. She watched him stop struggling, watched his eyes flutter closed, watched his fingers give a few last convulsive twitches, watched the heart monitor flatline. Kozak was speaking to her, asking some question, but Andy ignored her, turning her face away from the woman to instead stare at the continued flatline, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Nicky gasped back into life, only to begin choking once more. Andy allowed herself to close her eyes in one brief moment of simultaneous relief and utter despair, before she resumed speaking to him, trying to comfort him as he once again struggled against his bonds, eyes wide with panic, fighting as though somehow, this time, it would make a difference.

He died three more times before Kozak finally undid the straps holding his head in place, and Nicky’s head slumped towards her, his grey eyes dull and lifeless. Torrents of blood poured out of his mouth. Andy wasn’t sure what Kozak had given him to cause that much internal bleeding. His healing would have fixed the initial problem, but their blood replenished, rather than being drawn back into them. She wondered distantly if that was what Kozak had been trying to figure out, or if it was something else.

This time when Nicky jerked back into life, he coughed rather than choking. More blood fell from his lips, creating a truly horrific puddle on the floor beside him. When he could breathe enough to speak, his eyes locked with hers. “Joe?” he asked plaintively.

Andy closed her eyes again, just for a moment, before opening them to answer. “He’s not here, Nicky. Just me and you.” There was relief and pain and soul-crushing sadness in his eyes for a second, then the emotion was gone and his face grew hard as he tried to distance himself.

“Your boyfriend’s not here,” said Kozak, her lips curling in slight disgust.

Andy couldn’t decide if she wanted to roll her eyes or scream in frustration. Of course the woman was a homophobe. Why were people so _stupid_?

But Nicky smiled slightly, spitting out another gob of blood. “He would not want you to call him my boyfriend. He would tell you we are more to each other than words can describe, as is true. But also, he is my husband.”

Kozak looked taken aback, and Andy snorted. But then the woman’s face hardened, and she grabbed a long needle, plunging it abruptly into his side, until it was five or six inches deep. Nicky made a sound that was half gasp, half whimper, his body going rigid as it tried to cope with this new and unexpected pain. Andy yelled also, jerking as though she could get to Nicky, and then gasping herself at the wave of pain from her stomach. Evidently the anesthetic had worn off, which was regrettable.

Kozak held the needle there for a few minutes longer, muttering words to Nicky that Andy couldn’t hear. At one point, she twisted the needle and shoved it in another half inch, and Nicky made a sound that was almost a sob. Andy growled.

When she finally pulled the needle out, leaving Nicky gasping for breath, eyes closed, Andy looked at the thing in horror. On the end of the needle was what looked like a small piece of some organ, which Kozak examined interestedly.

“Nicky,” Andy said, looking over at him. He opened his eyes, looking at her. They were distant, pained, tired.

“I’m here, Andy,” he replied. She held his gaze, and nodded at him. _Me too. I am also here, with you,_ her eyes said. Nicky’s gaze softened for a moment in his secret smile.

__

“Okay, enough, get your shit together!”

When they had returned to their new-and-hopefully-safer safe house, courtesy of Copley, Nile had immediately rounded on the two men. Joe had spent the entire car ride glaring at Booker, whereas Booker had swayed a bit and looked quite sick as the car jostled the four bottles of wine he had consumed already that day (what, after all, was liver failure to an immortal?).

“Joe, I know you’re pissed. But you are also nearly a thousand years old. Booker, you’re drunk. Tough shit, sober up. You’re over two hundred. I, however, am only twenty-seven. I should not need to be the mature one here! So get your shit together, and let’s get Andy and Nicky!”

The barely restrained panic in her voice had the two men looking ashamed. For the first time since he and Nile had woken up alone on the floor, Joe’s face softened. “Nile, I am sorry,” he said. “You are right.” He turned to Booker, who was looking at the floor now, swaying slightly and obviously miserable. “There is some coffee ready in the kitchen, and some food.”

Booker nodded, and turned to sway towards what was probably the kitchen.

Joe turned back to Nile, and noticed in guilty horror that her lower lip was trembling a tiny bit. He quickly stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. “Nile, it will be ok. We’ll get them back, you have done so well, and I’m sorry I put you in a position where you had to take charge.” Which is exactly what he had done, he realized now. He had been nearly despondent after waking up without Nicky. Despondent, and furious. He couldn’t even remember the call to Copley that he knew they must have made, or how Copley had figured out that Dr. Kozak was behind this, or the drive to Booker’s apartment (apparently Andy had been having Copley keep track of him).

He felt her nod into his shoulder, and he sighed. “They will be ok. Nicky will…” He paused a moment to push back his rage. “Nicky will protect Andy. You know he will. They will be ok.” She nodded again, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m going to call Copley. You get changed. You’re covered in blood.”

Nile snorted. “So are you,” she muttered.

“True,” he replied, shoving her towards the bathroom. She went, and as soon as the door closed behind her, Joe’s eyes hardened. “Time to get this done,” he muttered to himself, dialing Copley. It was time to get Nicky and Andy back.

__

“You fucker!” Andy’s rage was so intense it burned (or maybe that was the stitches in her stomach, torn open by her desperate struggles to get to Nicky?). “Get away from him, leave him alone!”

But Kozak didn’t leave Nicky alone. She was leaning over him, intent on her work, holding open the gash she had made in Nicky’s chest with one hand while she cut away one of his ribs with the other. Nicky screamed, a strangled sound that wasn’t even human. He sounded like a dying animal, and Andy screamed with him, tearing at the straps that held her down even though she knew it to be futile. Then Nicky’s scream cut off, and he was gone. Shock and blood loss, Andy knew. There were tears running down her face, but she didn’t quite understand how they had gotten there.

Kozak didn’t stop her work. She made a few quick cuts, and pulled out -- Andy sobbed, a single desperate sound cut off as soon as she realized what was happening -- was that a lung? Then Kozak waited, watching intently, never removing her hands from Nicky’s chest. It took him sixty-three seconds to wake up. When he did, he screamed, but it was an awful choking sound that turned into a gurgle as he coughed up blood. Still Kozak just kept her hands inside of him, peering intently, then poking curiously at something -- Nicky’s regrowing lung, Andy guessed.

The sounds Nicky was making weren’t even human, but somehow, between cries and gasps and sobs and screams, he was pleading, begging Joe to save him, begging in Italian and Arabic and Latin and English and Greek, begging him for help. Tears streamed down his face as he yelled for Yusuf, but the other man’s name was cut by a wordless, animalistic scream as Kozak pulled out another lung, the one he had just regrown.

Nicky died again. This time, the woman removed her hands from him before he woke up. Andy was gasping, beyond even screaming as she stared in absolute horror between Nicky and Kozak, a rage so fierce welling up in her that she thought she would explode.

“How dare you,” Andy bit out at her. “How dare you touch him.”

Kozak opened her mouth to say something, but in that moment, Nicky woke up again, and both women turned back to him. Nicky’s first breath was a sob, but his second breath was “Yusuf.” Over and over as his lung and then his ribs and then his muscle and then his skin regrew, he called for Joe, for Quynh, Booker, Nile, and, heart stoppingly, for Andy herself. Andy thought her heart would break when Nicky sobbed out her name. “Andromache, help me,” he whispered, before calling for Joe again.

“Nicky, I’m here, Nicolo, I’m here, you’re ok, I’m here, it will be alright, Nicky, Nicolo.” On and on she said the words, staring intently at his face, willing him to look at her, to hear her, to break his panicked gaze away from the ceiling. After a few minutes, the regrowth was done, but still Nicky stared at the ceiling, silent tears running down his cheeks, whispering Joe’s name to himself. Andy glanced around, and realized that Kozak and her guards had left. For the first time in hours, they were alone.

“Nicky, Nicolo, do you hear me? Please hear me,” she begged him.

Finally, he turned to her. His tears had dried, but his eyes were distant even as they looked at her. “Andromache,” he said.

“Nicky.” Her voice cracked. She’d been screaming for what felt like hours, and her vocal chords no longer healed like his did.

“Andromache, you’re bleeding.” She had split all of her stitches, she knew, but she didn’t care, and hardly felt the pain.

“Not as much as you did,” she replied, but the joke fell flat, probably ruined by the sob that escaped before she could snap her mouth shut.

“Andy,” Nicky whispered. “Andy, I’m tired. Where is Joe?”

“He’s not here, Nicky,” she told him. “But he’ll come for you. For us. He will be here.”

Nicky nodded, and turned his head back up to stare at the ceiling. He was silent for a few minutes. Then he said quietly, “I miss him. We haven’t been back to Malta yet.”

Andy blinked. “I didn’t know you wanted to go to Malta. We can go to Malta once we’re out of here.”

Nicky gave a slight smile. “It’s not that kind of trip to Malta.”

Andy snorted despite herself. “Fine, you and Joe can go to Malta. Nile and I will go to Greece.” Nile hadn’t been to Greece yet.

“Okay,” said Nicky.

Andy looked over at the man who had been her little brother for almost a millennia. He looked so young right now. So young, and tired, and lost. Andy felt ancient, and angry.

“Get some sleep, Nicky,” she told him quietly. “I’ll keep watch.”

Nicky looked at her for a moment, nodded, and closed his eyes. Andy kept her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, and allowing her rage to simmer.

__

They were getting close. Copley had tracked down Dr. Kozak and her new company -- one of those competitors Merrick had been so worried about -- and was just working out which location Andy and Nicky would have been brought to.

They were getting close, Joe told himself. Every moment he had to push back his rage, his despondency, his desire to grab his gun and sword and sprint out of their safe house, screaming for Nicky as he cut down everyone in his way. But that would help nothing and no one. And it would scare Nile. (Actually, he wasn’t sure if it would scare Nile, but it probably would at least upset her, and not wanting to upset Nile currently seemed like the best reason he had to not murder everyone in his path until he found someone who could lead him to Nicky. A much better reason than, say, morals or the innate goodness of his heart, both of which he felt he had currently misplaced. Nicky probably had them, Joe thought semi-hysterically.)

__

Nicky awoke before Kozak came back, but both he and Andy stayed quiet, lost in their own thoughts and steeling themselves for whatever was to follow.

When Kozak did finally return, neither of them even looked at her. They both stared at the ceiling, taking refuge in their own minds for as long as possible.

Kozak was saying something, but Nicky didn’t listen. He was done trying to reason with her. He was done with this whole thing, really, and ready for Joe and Nile to bust through that door. He remembered all too clearly the feeling of waking up without a lung, of feeling the beginning of the excruciating process to grow it back, only to have it ripped out again.

He remembered Andy’s screams of pure rage and helplessness. Actually, he thought those might haunt him longer even than the snap of bone as Kozak’s clippers cut through his rib. He couldn’t remember if Andy had ever seen him tortured before. She was their leader, and the few times in the past when they’d been captured together, she had thrown herself in front of the team, literally and figuratively, placing herself between them and danger, and taking as much of the damage as she possibly could herself.

But this time was different. They were still getting used to this whole thing, with Andy as a mortal and no Booker and the (wonderful) addition of Nile. They were still learning how to fight when one of them could not -- was not allowed to -- die. Andy was learning, for the first time in millenia, what it was to be something other than invincible. None of them were enjoying the learning curve.

Some faint change in Kozak’s movements around the room caught his attention. Some sharpening of focus in the way she moved. Nicky snapped out of his reverie, his head turning to follow Kozak as she approached Andy. Andy was watching Kozak too now, face stony and eyes hard.

Kozak was speaking still, and now Nicky tuned into it, blood running cold as he heard what she was saying. “I can’t take your lung, of course, like I did his. But certainly a kidney would be fine. I’ll have to take one of his later for comparison, but that isn’t a problem.”

Andy just glared at the woman.

“Are you going to give her something? For pain?” asked Nicky, desperately trying to think what would happen if Kozak didn’t give her anything. He had seen people have kidneys removed without drugs before, but not in the last century or so, and never when they weren’t unconscious or drunk out of their minds, and anyways they hadn’t generally survived the procedure. Would she die of shock? He had no idea. They had never had to pay this much attention to death before.

Kozak eyed Andy speculatively. Andy glared back, silent and unmoving. “Hmm, I don’t think so,” said Kozak. Was Nicky imagining the slight shudder that ran through Andy’s body? “Not yet, at least.”

“Hold still,” she told Andy. “This will be significantly worse if you move around.” Nicky saw Andy brace herself, centering herself in the internal still space of the true warrior. The panic that had flooded her upon first waking up here, restrained and confused, was well and truly under control now. This was a more familiar Andy, allowing the anger and fear coursing through her to turn her into stone, rather than fire.

So Nicky also tried to center himself, but it had never been easy watching Andy, or any of them, get hurt, and the stakes were so much higher now.

“Andy,” he said. She glanced at him, eyes blank and unreadable, but didn’t shake her head. Nicky nodded, maintaining eye contact until she looked away, staring up at the ceiling and readying herself for the pain. If she’d wanted him to stay quiet, to let her focus, she would have let him know. Instead, Nicky spoke.

“Andy, Andromache, I am here, I know it will hurt, but I am here, it will be ok.”

He kept speaking, eyes locked on Andy, as Kozak made the first cut. Andy’s breathing hitched, her face twisting in pain. As the scalpel pushed further in, she let out a strangled gasp, her eyes wide and staring, her hands curling into fists. Kozak was running the scalpel over and over the cut now, deepening it beyond the layers of skin. Andy let out a half groan, half yell when the scalpel began slicing through muscle, breath coming more and more raggedly. Still, Nicky spoke to her, tried to let her know that he was there, that she wasn’t alone.

It was when Kozak began to pull apart the two sides of the clean cut that Andy screamed. Her body bucked, and Kozak pulled away quickly. “This will be significantly quicker if you keep still,” she said.

Andy’s eyes were wild as she panted, but she managed a pained “Fuck you.”

Kozak dove back in, harshly pulling apart the two sides of the large cut in Andy’s side. Andy screamed again, body jerking against her bonds. Nicky distantly realized that he had stopped speaking calmly, and was yelling again, yelling at Kozak to leave her be, yelling Andy’s name, yelling for Joe to help them.

There was so much blood. How did doctors normally stop the bleeding during surgery? Nicky had no idea. His medical knowledge was not that specialized, and his knowledge of combat medicine, including field surgery, was about seventy years out of date. Everything he had learned about medicine in the last year (they had all learned, all studied, much to Andy’s annoyance) was about closing wounds, not opening them.

Andy’s eyes were fluttering closed now. Nicky screamed her name desperately, telling her to stay awake, telling her to hold on.

He turned to Kozak. “Please, stop! Stop the bleeding, she’s going to bleed out, please, you’re killing her!”

__

Nile stumbled when they heard the first scream. She would have fallen, if Booker hadn’t caught her. Eyes wide, she frantically searched Booker and Joe’s faces, the weapon in her hand drooping forward, forgotten.

“Andy?” she gasped, horrified. That hadn’t sounded like Andy, couldn’t have been Andy, she had never heard Andy make a sound like that, and she’d seen the older woman hurt plenty of times in the last year.

But the expression in the men’s eyes told her otherwise. They had heard that sound before, and there was no surprise in those faces, only pain and anger and determination.

“Let’s go,” said Joe, pulling her forward. “She’s close. They’re close.”

Nile stumbled forward behind Joe, Booker at her back, the men sandwiching her as she shook off her shock.

There was a door up ahead, at the end of the long hallway. No one between them and it, no other doors, and all three of them broke into a run as a second scream pierced the air. As they got closer, they heard other sounds. Nicky, Nile realized. Nicky, yelling Andy’s name, begging, begging her to stay awake, and then begging for whoever was hurting her to stop, to stop killing Andy.

Frantically waving the key card (handily supplied by a less-than-willing guard), Joe crashed against the door. A split second later, it fell open under his weight, and the three of them piled into the room. Six quick shots later -- two from each gun -- and the guards were dead. Kozak only had a split second to stare at them in horror before Joe fired, and the woman fell to the ground with a bullet between her eyes.

They were across the room to the two operating tables in a moment. Joe went straight to Nicky, who, Nile realized with horror, was crying as he called Andy’s name. Nile stumbled again as she approached Andy. There was so much blood, and the woman was so pale. Her eyes were closed. Only the heart monitor proclaimed that she was still alive, if barely.

Booker pushed past her as Nile stood frozen with shock and horror. He stumbled to Andy’s side, then turned back to Nile. “Grab her shirt!” He commanded. The shirt… Nile shook her head to clear it. The shirt was lying on a tray at the foot of the bed. Nile grabbed it and threw herself forward. “Stop the bleeding!” Booker gasped.

It took Nile a moment to find where the blood was even coming from, there was so much of it. Andy was entirely coated in blood. But she could see it moving, flowing from a huge gash on her side. Quickly, Nile jammed the shirt against the wound, applying as much pressure as she dared. Andy didn’t move.

“Andy!” Booker had his forehead pressed against hers, her face cupped in his hands. “Andy, please.” His voice broke. “Andy, please wake up.”

But Andy didn’t wake up. Instead, the heart monitor beeped a little bit faster for a moment, and then began one final, never ending beep.

They all froze.

“Andromache!” That was Nicky’s voice, Nile realized distantly, but so distorted with pain and grief that it was hardly recognizable. Then Joe screamed wordlessly. Booker was still holding Andy’s face between his hands, and he looked frozen, mouth open and eyes wide as though he simply couldn’t believe this.

Nile felt her knees hit the floor before she realized that she was falling. Her hands fell away from Andy’s side, still holding the bloodsoaked shirt. She heard a strange, hysterical little sob, before she realized that she had made the sound, that she was sobbing, eyes blurred with tears, shaking so hard that she felt as though the world would fall down around her.

Nile didn’t know how long they stayed there, a tableau of pain and grief. Time felt unreal, but Nile knew their time was infinite, infinite without Andy and she simply couldn’t imagine it, didn’t want to try. Andy, who had knocked her out, kidnapped her, shot her in the head, and broken her arm and leg the first day they had met. Andy, who had been so jaded, but whose eyes had begun to light up again in the last year. She fought, Nicky and Joe had told Nile a few months ago, like she hadn’t fought in centuries. She fought like she wanted to live. And now she wasn’t living.

The scene was broken by soft words that nearly stopped Nile’s heart.

“I said… have a little faith, Book.”

The whole room seemed to jerk at the sound of that voice. The world trembled and turned, and somehow Nile threw herself upwards, threw herself into the air until she was standing, staring in shock at the woman beside her. Nicky and Joe were there, too, Nicky finally free from his bonds, hands scrabbling at Andy’s side, wiping away blood, but unable to find a single wound.

“Andy,” someone breathed, Nile wasn’t sure who. Perhaps it had been all of them.

Andromache the Scythian smiled up at them, eyes fierce and glowing with happiness and love and life.

“How,” choked out Nile.

Andy met her eyes, still smiling, and shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t my time.”


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a one-shot story, but a few of you requested an epilogue, so I thought I'd oblige :)

“Andy!” Nicky’s yell pierced the air, and the entire room jerked awake.

Their sleeping arrangements tonight were less like an organized barrack and more like a cuddle-puddle. Nicky and Joe were on a low cot against the wall, as usual, Joe curled around Nicky as though to shield him from all harm. Booker was back in his normal place, a couple of feet to their left, banishment commuted by Andy’s simple yet effective strategy of draping her arm around his shoulders and not letting go until the door of the safe house was closed and locked behind them.

Andy, who usually slept wherever she passed out, had tonight dragged a pillow onto the floor between Nicky and Booker. No one commented on the way she had curled her body around the blanket that was ostensibly there to keep her warm, instead wrapping it in a tight hug and seeming to hold on for dear life. And Nile, who had been inseparable from Andy since her return to the land of the living, had simply dragged her cot over to lay horizontally by their feet, creating a shield between the others and the door.

So when Nicky screamed, the reaction was instantaneous. Andy, only six inches away, shot up from her sleeping position. “Nicky!” she gasped out, looking around as though she had forgotten where she was, eyes wild until they found the man in question. Joe had thrown himself over Nicky, grabbing the gun the other man kept by their bed, crouching over his husband to shield him. Booker and Nile had also grabbed guns as they looked around frantically, blinking sleep from their eyes.

The only person, in fact, who did not wake up immediately was Nicky. Instead, he stiffened in his sleep, jerking against invisible bonds. “Andy!” he cried again, then “Joe!” Joe froze. “Joe, help her! Andy!”

Hastily dropping his gun, Joe cupped his hand around Nicky’s face. Andy made an abortive movement as Nicky began to struggle harder. Quickly, Joe dropped his hands, moving them instead to brush across Joe’s body as he muttered to his husband in rapid Italian.

Nicky’s breath hitched in a sob as he woke up. There were tears on his cheeks, and his eyes were frantic. They locked on Joe’s for a moment, his hands reaching up to grasp his husband’s arms. “Where is Andromache?” he asked desperately.

“I’m here.” Andy moved into his line of sight, leaning over him, her face tight with concern and understanding.

“Andy,” Nicky gasped.

Andy nodded, reaching out to grasp Nicky’s hand. He clung to her for a moment, before glancing past her at Nile and Booker, both staring at him in concern.

“Sorry,” he muttered. He sat up, then stumbled to his feet, letting go of Andy’s hand as he nearly tripped over Nile in his haste to reach the door. Andy and Joe exchanged a look, then Joe got up to follow him. Andy leaned against the wall, burying her head in her hands.

__

Nicky heard Joe’s footsteps behind him, but he kept stumbling forward, searching for a way out. His hands found the door, and he shoved it open, nearly falling out into the overgrown yard. Then he tripped over something -- an old watering can, he distantly realized -- and really did fall, his knees hitting the grass with a thud, and he curled in on himself, shaking with the memories.

His brian was scrambling everything up, he knew. In his mind, it was all happening at once. Strips of Andy’s skin were being peeled off her stomach as she screamed and thrashed and Nicky’s head was held into place as he choked on his own blood and Kozak was cutting into his chest, snipping through his rib and ripping out his lung with her bare hands, and Andy was still screaming, and there was so much blood. There were needles inside him, Kozak was taking strips of his own skin now, as she poked Andy with needles and Andy moaned, and was that his liver that Kozak was holding in her hand? Probably, but everything was a haze of pain and blood and _Andy_. Where was Joe?

Then he was there. Nicky would know those arms anywhere, as Joe knelt in front of him, wrapping his strong arms around Nicky’s shaking shoulders, pulling him into a hug. Nicky could feel Joe’s soft kisses on his forehead and his cheeks and his lips, as Joe whispered to him in Italian, telling him that everything was alright, that he was here, that Andy was ok.

Slowly, Nicky pulled himself back into the world. The images retreated, although the phantom pains in his lung and rib remained, and his trachea still felt choked with blood.

“Joe,” he whispered, and Joe pulled back enough to look him in the face, eyes warm and loving and full of understanding, although Nicky could see the rage and pain buried deep.

“Why did Andy not want me to hold your face?” he asked after a moment. Nicky knew what Joe was doing. This was how they got each other to talk, when they needed to. One direct question was easier than “What happened?” and Nicky knew that the answer would lead them to everything else. But he didn’t resent the technique. Joe knew him, as he knew Joe, better than any two people had ever known each other. This was what he needed.

He took a shuddering breath. “Kozak…” Another breath, close to being a sob as the memories once again threatened to swamp him. “Kozak’s table…. There was something to hold my head in place… so I could choke… She choked me, and I kept dying, Joe, choking on my own blood, every time I woke up….” He knew his explanation was nonsensical at best, but it didn’t matter. They’d talk about this more, over time, until Joe had a complete picture, and Andy could fill in anything he couldn’t say aloud.

Joe pulled him close again, briefly touching Nicky’s head to tuck it into the crook of his neck, before releasing him and just holding him close, careful not to restrict his movement.

Nicky kept talking. He told Joe about the needles, and the skin, and his lung. He told him about all the things Kozak had done while Andy had been unconscious, how those were the worst, because he was alone then, with no one to talk to him while he screamed, except Kozak, muttering her poisonous words as he writhed under her knife. The woman was a sadist, even if she had never realized it herself. He had seen it in her eyes as she leaned closer to watch his face as she gutted him.

And he told him about Andy, about how afraid she had been when she had woken up, and how she had screamed as Kozak had cut into her. He had never been scared hearing Andy scream before. He had been angry, or hurt, or upset. But he had never been scared, because that was what Andy did. She put herself between them and danger or pain, and if that meant that she was the one screaming as some idiot cut her open, then so be it. None of them liked it, certainly, but her screams had never made them afraid before.

Through it all, Joe said nothing, just held him, although Nicky suspected he had been crying at one point, since Nicky’s shoulder was now a bit damp. When he was finally done, Joe was silent for a moment, then he kissed Nicky’s forehead before sitting back on his heels, looking intently at his husband.

“I am so proud of you, my love,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes. Nicky blinked, and his chin trembled for a moment. “You are my everything, you know that?” Nicky nodded. “You are here now, both of you, and Kozak --” Nicky flinched at the name. “Kozak is dead, the records have been erased, and everything will be alright.” Nicky nodded.

“Do you think… Do you think Andromache is immortal again?” Joe shrugged, although Nicky knew he was wondering the same thing.

“We can ask her to give herself a papercut tomorrow,” Joe said. Nicky gave a somewhat wet laugh. “Now come, are you ready to go inside?” Nicky nodded, and stood up. Together, their hands intertwined, the men walked inside, Nicky’s back a bit straighter and his eyes a bit calmer.

__

The others were still awake when the two men returned, and it didn’t look like they had moved much. Andy was still propped against the wall, staring into the distance. Nile was cleaning her gun, and Booker was looking at Andy as though he had thought never to see her again, which was fair enough, all things considered.

Nicky walked forward, and Andy looked up. “Andromache,” he said. Andy’s eyes were red-rimmed, but they softened as they met Nicky's, and she reached her hands out. Nicky took them, kneeling before her. They looked at each other for a long moment, until Nicky leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Andy smiled, reaching up to cup her hand around the back of Nicky’s head, pulling his forehead down to meet hers as he and Joe sometimes did.

“I’m alright, Nicky,” she said softly. “Look.”

Nicky looked down, and saw she was holding a piece of paper up to her arm. Behind him, Joe choked on a laugh. Swiftly, she slid the paper across her skin. The well of blood made Nicky tense, his breath catching as he thought of all the blood he had watched Andy spill in the last couple of days. But she reached out and lay her other hand on his cheek, gazing at him with a smile on her face as he watched the cut on her arm heal rapidly until the skin was perfect and unmarked again.

“Andy,” he choked out. There were tears in his eyes.

“It’s ok, Nicky. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

Nicky sobbed once, before Andy drew him into her arms, and they clung to each other. The others watched in silence, not one of them bothering to blink back tears. Andy and Nicky were crying too, Andy silently, Nicky’s breath ragged as the tension drained from their bodies and they clung to each other.

Everything would be alright now.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!


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